Calcutta, May 11: Primary teachers’ training institutes that had earlier offered a one-year course have got the permission to conduct a one-year bridge course so that their students can meet the national standard.

A letter from the Bhubaneswar office of the National Council of Technical Education (NCTE), allowing the bridge course, reached state school education minister Partha De this afternoon.

According to norms fixed in 2003 to ensure the quality of education provided by primary schools across the country, only those who have comple-ted two years’ training after clearing Class XII with at least 50 per cent marks can be teachers.

But the Bengal government was allowing primary teachers’ training institutes to offer one-year courses and admit students who had merely cleared Class X.

Calcutta High Court dec- lared these courses illegal in 2008, casting a cloud on the careers of thousands who had either passed from these institutes and were working as teachers, or were still trainees.

Over 70,000 candidates were affected by the order. Around 17,000 of them will immediately benefit from the bridge course. The others have either studied only till Class X or se-cured less than 50 per cent in their Class XII exams. They will have to take the Class XII exams and secure 50 per cent or more to be eligible for the certificates.

The NCTE comes under the Union human resource development ministry, to which the state government and even Mamata Banerjee and Pranab Mukherjee had made several petitions for a solution.

The Telegraph had reported on September 4, 2009, the NCTE plan to allow the bridge course for students who met its eligibility criteria.

“We are very happy that the NCTE has given us this permission,” minister Partha De said today. “We had written to the HRD ministry immediately after the court order.”

De said the state primary education board would open a unit that will frame the bridge course curriculum. It will be a correspondence course.

The earlier one-year course had been allowed following norms set by the state primary education board, but the court upheld the NCTE’s norms saying a central law would prevail in case of a conflict between a state and a central law.

Online result trial for CBSE – criminal and cheat proof ?!!

BY CHARU SUDAN KASTURI

New Delhi, May 11: Students may receive their Central Board of Secondary Education certificates online as a trial before the government introduces a law requiring all Indian educational institutions to place academic qualifications on a tamper-proof database.

The human resource development ministry plans to ask India’s largest school board to award its Class X and Class XII certificates on a secure online depository, before expanding the plan to cover all academic qualifications.

Top government officials have told The Telegraph that the CBSE will be asked to act as a pilot for the project, and that the HRD ministry ideally wants the board to offer online degrees this year itself.

But the board will be able to give the degrees online this year only if the ministry successfully identifies a depository for the task in time, the officials added. CBSE results are normally declared by end May, though the board has not issued a formal date yet.

If the ministry fails to select a depository by the end of this month, it may ask the board to try the online method while releasing the results of entrance examinations it conducts, such as the All India Engineering Entrance Examination or the All India Pre Medical Test, sources said.

It may otherwise need to depend on other government examinations to test the project before making it mandatory, or will have to wait till next year to use the CBSE examinations to conduct a trial run.

Over 1.6 million students appeared for the CBSE Class X and XII board examinations this year.

The process of selecting a depository comes even as the ministry finalises the National Database for Academic Qualifications Bill, 2010. Under the bill, all institutions — central and state school boards and all higher educational institutions — will have to place the academic qualifications they offer on the depository.

The depository will be tamper-proof and each student will have a unique account — like with dematerialised accounts for shareholders — where the contents of the documents cannot be changed.

Each time the student produces transcripts of his academic performance for higher studies or while applying for jobs, the institution or employer can verify the authenticity on the depository.

The move is aimed at curbing the practice of fraudulent degrees frequently used by students and job applicants and follows a series of complaints over the past few years received by the government, especially from foreign countries.

The HRD ministry is likely to pick either the Central Depository Services Limited or the National Securities Depository Limited — the country’s two registered online depositories for stock market securities — to maintain the database.

The ministry has just started the process of issuing requests for proposals from these two depositories, the sources said.